


Goes to Ground

by jerseydevious



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Emotional Repression, Episode: s04e12 Slaves of the Republic, Gen, this is a writing exercise i did, to familiarize myself with how utterly stilted these two are, update now with the sequel where they have more than normal feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28320324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/pseuds/jerseydevious
Summary: Obi-Wan has a question for Anakin following his experiences on Zygerria.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 68
Kudos: 336





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not intense in the vulnerability department, mostly because the PT era demands that no one is ever good at knowing where anyone else is, and actually the whole point of this little writing exercise was trying to remember how I thought of the massive miscommunication Obi-Wan and Anakin engage in...... for the literal entire length of time they knew each other. Ordinarily I wouldn't have posted it, but it's Christmas. Murr Christmas. Just don't go in expecting, like, my typical brand of vulnerability.

Obi-Wan had taken to hovering near Anakin, recently—not that Obi-Wan wasn’t well accustomed to hovering, but specifically in the last few weeks he’d taken to staying up at night draped in a chair across from Anakin’s workspace, studying him like Anakin was some sort of creature pinned behind glass in a Coruscanti museum. Obi-Wan had always hovered, in some measure. Caution _from I’ve never been responsible for a living thing before_ turned into _this living thing is a loose cannon_ turned into _I have to manage a war with this loose cannon;_ but Obi-Wan had developed a respect for what he called Anakin’s _self-reflection time,_ which was usually Anakin late at night in a singularly-lit section of the hangar, elbow-deep in the sparking guts of the newest fighter model. It was a kind of violence, in Anakin’s mind, but a cleansing one; he ripped apart engines and put them back together to make them more fuel-efficient, stripped controls, made them lighter. _The Republic pays for these and yet you tear them apart,_ Obi-Wan would say.

_Sure,_ Anakin would reply. He would feel grease at the corner of his mouth, clogging his skin. _But I make them better. Anything can get better._

Obi-Wan took to calling it Anakin’s self-reflection time because over the years, as Anakin failed horrendously at meditation over and over, Obi-Wan had given up. Obi-Wan had given up at teaching him a lot of things, but meditation had been the first to go—Anakin preferred not to think, when he could, and being perfectly motionless bothered him for an innate reason he couldn’t name He preferred something mindless. He could solder a perfect line, he could swing a lightsaber, he could breathe and blink, but that was maybe the extent of his value—those tasks, the mindless ones that became almost muscle memory, that was the life he lived for. It was a decent kind of value to have in a galaxy at war, but it wasn’t particularly Jedi-like, and Obi-Wan had agonized over it. Anakin knew—he could feel it, in every sour twist of the corner of his mouth, every frustrated huff when Anakin failed to understand the same thing Obi-Wan had been trying to teach him for years. He could tell that Obi-Wan sometimes chafed to claim Anakin as his student, because it would mean claiming himself as a bad teacher, and sometimes Anakin hated it for him. _It’s not his fault I’m unteachable,_ Anakin wanted to explain, whenever another Knight would stare down their nose at Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan had given up on meditation and taken to just breaking something in their shared quarters whenever Anakin was being infuriating, so Anakin could funnel his excess energy and intensity into fixing it. _If this is how you focus,_ Obi-Wan had said, cracking a plasteel casing with a swirl of the Force, _this is how you will focus, blasted child._

The hangar was never empty; the galaxy was at war and the war marched resolutely forward, and the muscle to grease the engine had to keep moving, but there were shifts, nominally. Anakin ignored them and did exactly what he felt like doing with his time when he felt like doing it, but no one seemed to mind. It gave him a bit of a thrill each time, to go with the wrong lunch to the mess hall, to sleep at the wrong hours—when possible, it was exciting, novel. He even liked the soldiers and mechanics who staffed the hangar bay, because they minded their business but they were friendly enough, and frequently all Anakin got was a nod, a quiet, _hello, General Skywalker,_ and they left Anakin to his work. There was no running commentary from Obi-Wan about how it was beneath a general, to be working on the same level as a grunt worker, and no chatter from Ahsoka about how she’d never really understand how any of this worked no matter how many times he tried to explain it. _I don’t know how you know it so well,_ she said, once. Anakin had been running low on patience, and had bitten through his lip to avoid saying, _I know because I was beat bloody if I didn’t, I know because if I didn’t find a different way to be useful it would have cracked me down the middle._ But it had grown on him. It had become a kind of violent meditation, just the repetition of ripping something apart and replacing it.

Obi-Wan, recently, had taken to following him through it all, though. He offered no explanation, so Anakin didn’t ask for one; it was hard to catalogue all the different ways Obi-Wan’s feathers could be ruffled, but if Anakin asked an explanation that Obi-Wan didn’t offer first, it sometimes offended him. Sometimes it also offended him if Anakin didn’t ask. Sometimes it offended him if Anakin asked incorrectly. Anakin had stopped trying to figure out where the lines were, because Obi-Wan was filled with hang-ups and trip wires and hidden windfalls, and Obi-Wan was wound so tight he’d never explain anything. Anakin had learned to live with it, the way Obi-Wan had learned to live with Anakin’s general moodiness.

“You could consider sleeping, sometime,” Obi-Wan drawled, from somewhere below Anakin.

Anakin paused, and then straightened, re-balancing himself on his ladder. “You’re also awake,” Anakin said, gruffly. “Again.”

Obi-Wan was leaned against the hull of the fighter, arms crossed, one leg kicked behind him. He always looked that elegant, unflappable, and always spoke with a crisp and clear Coruscanti accent. Next to him Anakin felt too tall, too gangly, his limbs in all the wrong places and his words near incomprehensible; too loud and too quiet, his voice all wrong and cutting off consonants and slinging vowels. _Uncouth,_ was the word Obi-Wan would have used. Obi-Wan had furiously tried to hammer Anakin’s voice and demeanor into something pleasant, and he must have succeeded in some respect, if Padme would still have him. Anakin owed him something for that, somewhere.

“I’m awake because you are,” Obi-Wan said, with a raise of his brow.

Anakin wiped his grease-smudged hand on an equally grease-smudged cloth, and looked down at them, annoyed that it wasn’t clean. At least he didn’t have to worry much about the glove. “Alright,” he muttered. Obi-Wan’s presence was strange, in the Force, through the mangled training bond they’d severed only halfway—he was carrying himself strangely, his hackles raised, like an anooba prowling closer to a carcass. The strangeness was a familiar one. It was a defensive posture, a defensive curl of the Force; Obi-Wan carried it around him as a shield. It made no sense that Obi-Wan would be defensive if he was the one seeking Anakin out.

_He wants to talk,_ Anakin realized, belatedly. Several weeks of this odd, late-night dance, Anakin cutting weary glances at Obi-Wan in the early hours of the morning, the excess drain of having a presence to play for sapping any of the peace he got—all of this, because Obi-Wan wanted to hold a conversation. It was unfathomable. If Anakin wanted to blow off steam by taking his poison to Obi-Wan, he did it the second he thought about doing it, and if it was a good, true fight, he could get vicious brawl of words, if one-sided. It was always one-sided in some respect, because as always, Obi-Wan was first and foremost the perfect Jedi; Obi-Wan’s words were cold and harsh while Anakin screamed what he was sure was nonsense, and then later they sparred until they could breathe around each other. Anakin would figure out how to force out a one-sentence apology, and Obi-Wan would do the same, and they would be alright, then. If Obi-Wan wanted to _talk,_ Anakin could provide the fury.

There was a tinny, high-pitched crack. Anakin looked down at his glove, the solder pen he’d been holding in it, and the pieces it had cracked in.

“Sleep might improve your self-control,” Obi-Wan said, lightly.

Anakin folded his hand around the pieces and shoved them deep into an inner pocket of his robe. He could be angry, if Obi-Wan needed him angry. It wasn’t like Obi-Wan made it particularly difficult. “What’s it that you want, Obi-Wan?”

“You called me Master quite fine.”

Anakin bristled, and his heart leapt into his throat—for a few seconds he was so angry his chest, his lungs, his face, had all turned to fire. His pulse hammered in his ears. “Yes, Master, I did,” he grit out. “Is that what you wanted? To criticize what I _call_ you?”

Obi-Wan jerked. “I didn’t quite mean it like that,” he said, sharply.

_You’re hard not to upset,_ Anakin heard, beneath his words. Too loud and too quiet at the same time; too much, too little, too hot, too cold.

“Yes, Master,” Anakin said. He stared balefully at the wiring he was halfway through ripping out, the casing he’d popped off. He hated leaving a job half-done, but he could have it out with Obi-Wan and slink back. He could forgo the sleep, for the peace. His sleep was pockmarked by nightmares anyway.

Obi-Wan sighed. “I came for your _help,_ you know,” he said.

Anakin raised his arm and tossed the greasy cloth on the workbench several feet away and clambered roughly down the ladder. “What do you need, Master,” he said, swiping his hands on his robe.

Obi-Wan appraised him. His look unnerved Anakin; he looked disturbed, somehow, beneath his natural calm. “Does it bother you,” he said, softly, “the word? Calling me that. Did it bother you?”

Anakin stiffened. “Why would it,” he said, harshly. _It’s what every padawan says, it’s what every Jedi says, I’m not special,_ he thought, harshly.

Obi-Wan shrugged. Looking at him, beneath the blazing white-bright lights, he looked exhausted; following Anakin’s sleep schedule must’ve been taking its toll. Anakin’s heart thumped. He took a few breaths, attempting to reign his knee-jerk fury into something manageable, something Obi-Wan could use.

“After Zygerria,” Obi-Wan said, quietly. “I—I’m not sure. I’ve just been thinking about—it, I suppose.”

“It,” Anakin murmured.

Obi-Wan nodded. “It’s—I don’t know what it—I never asked. I never thought you would want to discuss it, really, I thought it might have been better if it were buried. But I don’t know. I thought that maybe you deserved the—the courtesy, of asking.”

“The courtesy,” Anakin repeated.

The strangest part, of whatever parallel dimension Anakin had slipped into that involved Obi-Wan prying about things long lost to the sand, was that Anakin could sense that Obi-Wan earnestly _wanted_ him to answer. That Obi-Wan was curious, in a genuine kind of way, that the disturbed look Obi-Wan carried with him had less to do with Anakin himself and more to do with the life Anakin had lived. Anakin’s world felt like it had tilted severely to the left.

“I,” Anakin said, slowly. “I—don’t know.”

Obi-Wan offered him a searching look, like he was prepared for Anakin to say something profound. “In what way?”

“I mean,” Anakin said, swallowing, “that I never thought about it. No one—asked, I guess. It didn’t matter.”

It felt less profound than Obi-Wan surely had been expecting, and Anakin fisted his hands into his robes, wondering when he’d be able to carve words into bright and hard lines. When he’d be able to speak, and the words be alluring, be worth listening to—the Chancellor could pitch his voice in such a specific, soft tone that Anakin could listen to him for hours. The Chancellor had intelligent thoughts and articulated them effortlessly and Anakin had always hung on to every word, desperate to know how he managed it.

Obi-Wan scoffed. “Does something not bother you if no one asks?”

Anakin hunched his shoulders. The fire in his chest had turned to lead, and his breathing was slow, and measured. “I suppose not. It doesn’t rain in the desert if no one’s there to drink it. The water just goes to ground.”

Obi-Wan’s face contorted, and then he inclined his head, like Anakin had made a great and fascinating point, instead of repeated a phrase commonly passed around in a garbled mixture of Tatoo and Huttese in Galactic Standard. “Fair enough,” Obi-Wan said. “I just—I wanted you to know. If there was something you wanted to talk about, I would listen.”

Anakin stared at him. “Are you feeling alright?” he asked.

Obi-Wan sputtered. “I can—I can ask about _you_ , Anakin, and it’s—this isn’t that out of the ordinary, it’s not—”

Anakin chuckled, because at least, for all the strangeness of the moment, he was getting to see Obi-Wan flustered. It was a rare sight, one Anakin treasured—it was common ground, however small. “I’m just checking,” Anakin said, smirking.

Obi-Wan flicked a hand at him. “You are a hellion and a beast,” he said, but he was smiling, too. It was a phenomenally weird turn of events.

“Someone has to exist to torture you, ‘else your life would be too easy,” Anakin said. He peered, again, at the dark shadows beneath Obi-Wan’s eyes. “You ought to sleep, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan nodded, mutely. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’ll—I’ll do that. I’ll do that.”

As he turned to leave, the Force tugged at Anakin, and he blurted, “Does it bother you?”

He tried not to think of Zygerria. The cloying scent of the rare perfume the Queen of Zygerria wore, the way she looked at him like a slab of bantha flesh hanging on a hook in a foodstall—it reminded him of when he was younger, of being owned by Gardulla the Hutt, of the various times he’d been loaned out by Watto. His mother had always looked at him with such pity, cupped his cheeks and kissed his forehead and told him, _you’ll make it, you’ll make it._ He tried not to think of Zygerria. It reminded him too much of memories that looked like oil on glass and things he’d left to the sand a long time ago. No one else looked at him the way his mother had, the pride in him for surviving it, the horror for him that he’d survived it. He liked it.

Obi-Wan jerked, and then turned. “It—no, it, it doesn’t.”

“Liar,” Anakin said.

Obi-Wan waved him off. “It is as you say, I suppose. There is no rain in the desert unless someone is there to drink it.”

Obi-Wan turned, again, and Anakin had the wild thought that if he let Obi-Wan leave now, there’d be a place where he’d always be cracked down the middle, always. Anakin reached out and turned him around by the shoulder, and Obi-Wan’s face searched him. His eyes were bloodshot.

“My mom,” Anakin croaked. “My mom, she—Skywalker is a made-up name. It doesn’t exist. We didn’t have last names, it didn’t matter, we had no families, it was—Skywalker is made-up. It was useless. It’s nonsense.”

Obi-Wan frowned. “I don’t know that that’s quite—"  
  


Anakin swallowed, cutting off Obi-Wan’s words. “She said it was our name because she said, someday, we’d—walk the sky, I guess. Leave, and never go back. And now it’s my name. My real one, legal and everything, an’ sometimes—sometimes you decide what something means. Because I left.”

What Anakin kept to himself was that he’d returned to Tatooine, again and again, that the meaning of the word was defined by the orders Anakin followed, by the loss that drug him back time and time again. He was trying to say something bright, and hard, that Obi-Wan would hang on to, and maybe it would help.

Obi-Wan stared at him, wide-eyed. “I see,” he said, carefully.

Anakin was then hyperaware of his hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder, and he dropped it, coughed, and turned away. “It’s—sorry. That’s—sorry.”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “No, Anakin, I—I appreciate that.”

Anakin’s face felt hot, and tight and flayed at the same time. “Yeah?”

Obi-Wan squeezed his shoulder. “Thank you.”

Anakin’s world tilted severely to the right, and he ducked his head, burning to the tips of his ears and all the way down his chest. He didn’t look up even as Obi-Wan dropped his hand, and his boots thumped quietly against the floor. _I have no idea what just happened,_ he thought. After a long moment of staring at the floor, Anakin glanced up at the space Obi-Wan had left behind, and then turned back to his ladder. He would be glad for a sleepless night, and he hated leaving a job half-done.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mentioned previously that I was thinking about adding a more canon divergent bit where Obi-Wan and Anakin actually manage to confess a whole emotion between them, and I wanted to write that, so I did. It's also 1am, I'm a few shots in, and this is barely edited, and I am making rash decisions based on the fact that I want to cry publicly about Obi-Wan and Anakin with an audience.
> 
> Edit: please note that the entire beginning portion is me saying things in a way that sounds plausibly sci-fi enough to be SW, I know it's nonsense just let me ramble

He’d gotten to talk to Padme, which was maybe the only highlight of the entire affair on Aurasech V.

“I think you should stop being on delegations sent to planets also dealing with the Seppies,” Anakin huffed, pushing a heavy, ornate desk in front of the broad double doors.

Aurasech V was a moon that orbited an uninhabitable planet; Anakin remembered Obi-Wan telling him why the planet Barasech was uninhabitable, something about silicates and four thousand mile per hour winds and glass and heat, but Anakin had been half-asleep. Sleeping at night was impossible, but when Obi-Wan started offering what he called _supplementary information,_ it was as good as a lullaby. Aurasech V had a long orbital pattern and gave Barasech a wide berth, as it were. It was the only inhabited moon of Barasech’s and the people who lived on it were a traditionalist kind of monarchy, believing their line of monarchs was descended from divinity, and the keep of the High Alces was covered in jewels and delicately carved precious metals from across the sector, all of which were getting crushed beneath Separatist blasterfire as a droid battalion took a chance at slaughtering a committee of five Republic senators. The Senate had sent a delegation intent on having Aurasech V classified as a territory of the Grand Republic without informing the Jedi Council, or at least the information had never managed to trickle down to the warship holding off Separatist forces in the sector, which made Anakin want to throw Grand Master Yoda through a window. As the war spread to this edge of the galaxy, Aurasech V’s proximity to major uninhabited mining planets like Kyltar and Hrath would make it indispensable, especially to the Separatists’ never-ending need for the raw materials and manpower to build their endless droids. But the Republic needed weapons, too, and with the Separatists claiming planets rich in raw materials one after the other, the Republic was running out of options.

“I’m not trying to make nearly dying a habit,” Padme said, obstinately, from somewhere behind him. “I wasn’t even supposed to be on this committee, I hope you know.”

Anakin backed off from the doors. The desk was at least a hundred pounds, and the droid models Anakin had seen weren’t built for any kind of strength, but they wouldn’t have much time; if Aurasech V had agreed to a Separatist contract, more droids, better armed droids, could be flooding the planet in hours. A few hours wasn’t a lot of time to rescue a committee sprawled across a castle and then find a ship that could get them through the atmosphere and to where the Resolute was shadowed in the orbit of Barasech’s largest moon, Aurasech III. Aurasech III’s size, and the constant, signal-altering storms would cloak the Resolute from radar, but in order to keep a capital ship from detection, communications ingoing and outgoing had to be shut down. The ship had to be as close to appearing dead in space as it could. Which meant no reinforcements, naturally, and Anakin wasn’t supposed to have revealed himself—there had been some semblance of a plan that had trickled down from the Council, but it was one of the worst plans for a reconnaissance mission he’d ever heard in his life, and the appearance of the delegation had shot it down anyway. Sometimes Anakin was convinced the Council made moves specifically because they wanted him to die somewhere. He could see it, the miserable little funeral where the Grand Master tried to scrounge together a few words steeped in smarminess; _thorn in my side, Anakin Skywalker was, deserved what he got, he did._

“If you weren’t supposed to be on it, why are you here,” Anakin snapped, pacing the room. He had no clue what it was supposed to be. There were a lot of couches, and various stuffed animal heads, but outside of that it appeared to be useless—a window, but they were a few stories up, and he was hoping he wouldn’t have to exit the castle to get to the other senators. Without a doubt, there would have been some security placed at the entrances.

Padme was pulling down the ornate cage her hair had been bound it, gilded piece by piece. She was beautiful when she was changing; there was a kind of creature on Alderaan, a kind of bird, that could change its shape, its color. It could make itself more threatening, or more beautiful, or not seen at all—Padme was like that, a changeling of a sort, ever the tactician. None of her presentations were false. She was always herself in any guise, and he thought it was beautiful, if a bit time-consuming. But she was always beautiful, always Padme.

“Don’t get short with me,” she said, sharply. “Get angry with the droids, if you have to, Ani.”

The nickname lanced his panic. If Padme trusted him, he couldn’t fail her. “How do you feel about windows,” he said, flicking his gloved hand to the smallish one set near the corner of the room. “And how do you feel about making this about as stupid and convoluted as it can get.”

Padme’s lips turned up at the corner. “If I felt badly about either, I wouldn’t have married you. I need a second to tie this dress out of the way, but I have two blasters and a poisoned dagger, if that’s any use.”

Anakin raised a brow. “A poisoned dagger?”

“Royal Nubian tradition, telfir knife dipped in baurlock, after the assassination of the seventh king of—later, I’ll tell you later,” she said. Her hair whipped her in the face as she braided it, her fingers flying down the tangle of hair, fast from years of practice.

Anakin looked her up and down. The dress was long, but barebacked, and there was no space in the smooth teal bodice to hide anything, but he knew Padme preferred to keep her blasters tucked away into her boots, when she wore flowing dresses like this. “I can’t figure out where the knife is,” he said.

Padme cocked a brow. “Thigh holster, Ani.”

Anakin flushed. “Oh, that’s—well, that’s, I guess—that’s… a place you could keep it.”

Padme bent down and shredded the fabric with her hands—she was always deceptively strong—and Anakin watched, mildly fascinated, as she converted a floor-length-with-a-glittering-train gown into something she could theoretically fight in. Every so often his mind skittered to the secret thigh holster, the telfir knife dipped in baurlock, the way her thigh was always soft underneath his hand.

“We can discuss the thigh holster—at length—after we’re probably not going to die,” Padme said.

“That’s—that’s the best incentive I’ve ever had not to die,” Anakin said, swallowing.

Padme laughed. Like a gift, she leaned forward and hooked her hand in his robes, tugging him down. “One of these days,” she said, softly, “I’ll wake up next to you every day. How’s that for incentive?”

Anakin cupped her face, tilting it upwards, dragging one gloved thumb over her cheekbone. “Better than the best incentive I’ve ever had not to die,” he said, and then he craned down and kissed her—quick and bruising, the way she liked it, the way they only really ever had time for.

It was all terribly romantic until he had to jump out of a window with her, and aside from getting to see Padme fling the telfir dagger directly into the chest of the High Alces’ son—which would be an image Anakin would be thinking about probably for the rest of his life, and maybe one of the more important things he’d seen—there wasn’t much that was positive about it. The High Alces’ son had made a deal with the Separatists to allow them to occupy Aurasech V if they could depose the High Alces himself. Things had gone wildly astray and the High Alces’ son had leveled a blaster at the temple of a senator Anakin didn’t recognize, and without any kind of ranged attack and his head pounding from an explosion induced concussion, Anakin had made a useless attempt at talking the High Alces’ son down while Padme snuck her dagger into her hand and made her play. The High Alces’ son had still shot the senator, but it the dagger had thrown the shot wide, and it had only ended up grazing the senator’s chest and stomach. The next in line for the throne was a seventeen-year-old cousin of the now deceased High Alces, a girl with bleached white knuckles who signed an agreement with the Republic after watching her uncle and cousin die horrifically in quick succession. The entire affair left Anakin feeling hollowed out, like all of Aurasech V had been tricked somehow—he would have liked to talk with Padme more, as well, but there was no time. There was never any time. The Resolute couldn’t hang dead forever. Anakin was escorted back by the new High Alces’ royal guard, verbally gutted the first person who mildly suggested he visit a medic, and recounted the whole sideways, mind-bogglingly stupid endeavor to the Council through holoconference.

He was pretty sure Master Windu had to cover his mouth to smother his laughter, and for once, instead of fury, Anakin was just glad someone had managed to find something amusing in all of it. Even if he did have to bite his lip bloody to keep from snarling, _does anyone want to take credit for how stupid leaving a Republic cruiser dead in space for the sake of one singular Jedi was, or do I have to interview you one by one to get answers on that._ Obi-Wan might have been proud of the restraint, or he might have seen the blood dribbling down Anakin’s lip and muttered something about how the restraint very nearly failed him. Their next orders involved aiding an overwhelmed and exhausted legion five hours of hyperspace over, and at the very least it was the kind of warfare Anakin was best at—a creeping barrage, to be specific. Anakin was criticized, and often, for the fact that he often marched on the frontlines following the artillery, but in truth it was his favorite place. He carved the droids’ formations into shards, and then the 501st picked them off one by one by miserable one, without having to stare down droids that were better off being dispatched by a Jedi Knight. Ki Adi Mundi called it reckless, and Anakin had told him _you can call it reckless when you’ve won half the battles I have,_ and stalked off.

That was Colchorra, and in a week, the Republic had taken three major cities in the Southern hemisphere. The Negotiator arrived shortly afterward and walled the Separatists in on either side, eliminating them entirely after a standoff south of the capital that ended when Anakin told Ahsoka don’t follow me and chased the droid commander, a chase that ended when cut him out of the cockpit of his escape vessel and threw him several hundred feet to the ground, and the droids scattered like water bugs. Obi-Wan, as the leader of the Open Circle Armada and a Jedi Master, was tasked with going before the Colchorran representatives and communicating the protection and funding the Republic would provide. For once, Obi-Wan’s responsibilities coincided with a lapse in Anakin’s and a medic-recommended rest for Ahsoka, and between the five hours of sleep he’d gotten in as many days, and the bone-deep ache that twisted through all of him, the only thing he wanted was Colchorran bryshtafig—a mead they made from the bone marrow of the massive, herbivorous long-necked reptiles that stalked their forests. He stopped into a ramshackle bar for a bottle, left with croaked _thank you, Jedi, thank you,_ and a ceramic jug of it larger than his head. He ambled his way back to his quarters onboard the Resolute, clapping the backs of a few of the soldiers he passed.

Rex saw him, too, and gave him a broad grin. “Big plans, General Skywalker?”

Anakin clapped his shoulder, offering a smirk of his own. “R-and-R, Commander, R-and-R. Get some of your own, it’s been a long week.”

“Bryshtafig, right?” Rex asked, and trust a soldier to know his alcohol on sight.

Anakin laughed and Rex left him to it. Bryshtafig had a sweet taste, surprisingly enough, which made swallowing it down a chore—Anakin didn’t have a taste for sweet, preferred heat and salt. But he sucked it down and by the time the door to his quarters beeped in warning, his vision was just past blurry, but he liked it; the mindlessness of it all, the way the burn of death in the Force was so much further away.

A boot poked his thigh. Obi-Wan’s presence in the Force was cool; not cold, not hot, but cool. It flooded over Anakin, close enough to touch. He squinted up at Obi-Wan, and flicked his hand to the jug. “Try some, it’s nice,” Anakin said.

“I don’t drink.”

Anakin snorted. “Your loss, Master.”

Obi-Wan crossed over him and settled on Anakin’s mussed bed. He looked exhausted, beyond exhausted—Anakin wanted to reach out to him, squeeze his shoulder, but there was always a wall around Obi-Wan that seemed impenetrable. He commanded and demanded his personal space in equal measure.

But Anakin was speaking without realizing. “I wish I had something to say to you,” Anakin said, softly, and then after it occurred to him that the Force was rippling around Obi-Wan because he’d spoken it, he wanted to break something.

“What?” Obi-Wan said. His head had snapped up, and he was staring down at where Anakin was pressed against the side of the bed, bundled on the floor. “What—did we have a fight, Anakin?”

Anakin rubbed his jaw. “No, no, it’s—you look tired, Obi-Wan. I didn’t know what to tell you to—fix it.”

Obi-Wan regarded him, face unreadable. Or maybe it was the alcohol. “It’s nothing rest won’t fix,” he said. “I daresay you need some of the same yourself, instead of—isn’t this made from bone marrow?”

Anakin grinned. It felt like it was all teeth. “Sure it is,” he said.

Obi-Wan leaned over and hefted the jar, taking a cautious sniff of the uncorked lid. “Smells nice, actually,” he said, surprised.

“You’ll like it, you like sweets.”

It was a testament to Obi-Wan’s exhaustion that he did take a sip, and his eyebrows crawled to his hairline. “It’s—better than I expected,” he said, finally.

“What happened to no drinking?” Anakin asked, slyly.

“You are a bad influence, padawan mine,” Obi-Wan said. He gave Anakin that smile, the one that made Anakin feel like he shared a secret with his Master, something only for them.

_Bad influence,_ Anakin thought, and after Obi-Wan had taken another long drag of the bottle, Anakin tugged it out of his hands and swallowed back some more. “Bad influence,” he said, out loud, unable to keep the coldness out of his voice.

Obi-Wan let Anakin take another swig, and then took it for himself and nursed it for a while, while the bryshtafig settled in Anakin’s system. After a while Anakin hauled himself up, and nearly toppled into the wall—but Obi-Wan’s reflexes were impeccable, and in a second his arm was over his old Master’s shoulders.

Anakin blinked, rapidly. “Hello,” he said, awkwardly. He wasn’t prepared for Obi-Wan’s closeness, the intensity of it.

“I think that’s quite enough for you,” Obi-Wan said, and he laid Anakin on the bed, propped his shoulders against the wall. Anakin hiccuped, loudly, and then Obi-Wan beamed a smile at him and before Anakin could track what he was doing, he’d pulled Obi-Wan against him and buried his face in Obi-Wan’s shoulder.

Klaxons rang in his head, furiously—he was stepping into dangerous territory, invading Obi-Wan’s space like that, but he fisted his hands in Obi-Wan’s robes like he’d die if he let go. But, wonder of wonders, Obi-Wan didn’t shove him off, didn’t stalk out; Obi-Wan’s arms around him were tight and warm, and something in Anakin settled, like this was the thing he’d been waiting for and didn’t know.

“I should note that alcohol makes you rather clingy,” Obi-Wan said, amused.

Anakin twisted his face closer to Obi-Wan’s neck. “Maybe,” he mumbled.

Obi-Wan’s hand ghosted over his back, and then he pulled away, straightening his robes. “I’ll let you rest. You need it, I think.”

There was a stiffness to him, and a stiffness to the Force, that felt unnatural; and any other time, Anakin would have assumed Obi-Wan had hit his limit for how much he could take from his cantankerous former padawan. Any other time, the memory of Obi-Wan’s arms around him, clear and warm, wouldn’t have been in his mind, and it wouldn’t have felt like something had shifted.

“I wouldn’t mind if you stayed,” Anakin said.

Obi-Wan shifted, and actually rubbed the back of his neck. “If—if you don’t mind,” he said.

Anakin wordlessly patted the bed beside him, and Obi-Wan settled next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder—the way they should be, the way they were born to be, the way they would always be. For all their differences, for the gulf of life that lived between them, Anakin had always hoped that Obi-Wan was at least a fraction as fond of him as he was of Obi-Wan. Love, of a kind. Whatever souls were shaped like, his and Obi-Wan’s couldn’t have been more different, but maybe that was how they were always destined to work. Two imperfect halves.

“It’s quite good,” Obi-Wan said, after a while. “I have to tell you, Anakin, I was glad you weren’t in the representatives’ conservatorium today, ‘else you may have thrown yourself bodily over the pulpit.”

Anakin snorted. “Probably. Could always go back and do it now, just as a warning.”

Obi-Wan laughed. “You could. I’d watch. Maybe get a round of applause going. There were, truly, the most frustrating questions. I provided the reading material, I expected it to be, well, read.”

Anakin side-eyed him. “Who taught you that?”

Obi-Wan looked up. “Taught me what?”

“That your assigned reading would actually be read, because I know it wasn’t me,” Anakin said.

Obi-Wan’s face, usually solemn, split into a smile. “Oh, is that it? Did everyone in the galaxy get the memo to not read anything I provided?”

“I made sure to spread the word,” Anakin said.

Obi-Wan snickered. “Ah, yes. You are a beast and a heathen, padawan mine.”

“Padawan-used-to-be-yours,” Anakin corrected. “I’m not fifteen. And it’s not our fault that you assign about three more datapads’ worth of reading than what’s actually necessary.”

Obi-Wan scoffed. “Once my padawan, always my padawan. They say that a Jedi does not know themselves until they train their first padawan. It was certainly true for me, but then again, you teach me something new every day.”  
  


Anakin looked at him. His heart thrummed against his sternum. “And what do I teach you?”

Obi-Wan’s lip curled. “That no one cares for my supplementary information.”

Anakin laughed, at that, and it was—he’d missed it more than he ever thought he could, just to laugh with Obi-Wan again. It felt like his life had turned into an endless march of death, until he couldn’t see past his nose for all the blood pouring into his eyes, and whether it was his own or someone else’s, he could never tell. He’d missed breathing, just breathing, with Obi-Wan more than he might have words for. Anakin drew his knees up to his chest, and perched his chin on them.

“What’s bothering you,” Obi-Wan said, tentatively.

Anakin raised a brow. “What isn’t. I fell a hundred feet through the air today.”

“I heard,” Obi-Wan said, dryly. “There were less, shall we say, risky methods to victory.”

“It doesn’t feel like a risk,” Anakin said, after a long stretch of silence.

Obi-Wan considered him. “How so?”  
  


Anakin shrugged, and looked out across his room—bleak, gray, military. “Nothing feels like a risk. Nothing feels dangerous. I could die in five minutes. I could die in five days, does it matter?”

Obi-Wan sucked in a breath. There was a long, shaky breath that followed it, one after the other, until Obi-Wan was breathing evenly. “It matters,” he said, finally.

Anakin scrubbed a hand through his hair—his flesh one, because the scar tissue at the base of his prosthetic was inflamed and feverish and hurt to move, probably from overuse. Anakin didn’t clean it as often as he should. “Yeah. Have to—help win the war.”

“No,” Obi-Wan said, harshly. “No, it matters because—you have a life, Anakin. You deserve to live it.”

Anakin shrugged, again, and said, “So do you.”

It made Obi-Wan flinch, though Anakin hadn’t intended it as a barb. “I’m serious, Anakin,” he continued. “Don’t—don’t take risks intentionally. Please.”

Anakin ducked his head, so his face was pressed against his knees. “Alright,” he mumbled.

Obi-Wan took another long pull from the bottle, after that, and he must have needed it, because when he settled it back between them he took a deep sigh. “I’m not sure how to proceed,” he said.

“Usually, it’s one foot in front of the other.”

Obi-Wan snorted. “Quiet, I am _—trying_ to have a serious conversation. I care for you, Anakin. I’ve—missed you, in a fashion. I am sorry to see you worn out.”

Anakin looked up at him, then, and though Obi-Wan was stubbornly looking away, Anakin could feel it through the Force. The warmth that Obi-Wan was trying to direct at him, and it was like Anakin had been freezing to death, and had never known he needed exactly that. It was like a light had been turned on in some miserable corner of himself, to see and feel the truth of it.

“I care for you, too, Master,” he said, in a bare and thready voice. “I missed this. Just—sitting together.”

Obi-Wan scrubbed at his beard. “We never did much sitting, though,” he said. “You were never one for sitting down.”

Anakin smiled, wanly. “I’ve never been this tired before.”

Obi-Wan looked him in the eyes, the glassy blue there piercing Anakin through his ribs—Obi-Wan’s perceptiveness was almost a weapon. “Is that true?”

“What?”  
  


Obi-Wan gestured to Anakin. “In your entire life, that you know of, is that true?”

Anakin hunched his shoulders. “Probably not. Why does it matter?”

“I’m starting to think,” Obi-Wan said, slowly, “that a great many things matter that I previously didn’t think they did.”

Anakin worried his lip. It was raw, from where he chewed through it so often. “You know how the Hutts make money,” he said, and it was a question without inflection.

Obi-Wan’s brows furrowed. “Theoretically,” he said, at last. “They sell—goods.”

“People. They’d sell people, but they don’t sell anything. On Tatooine, slaves were almost never sold, meaning the property deed never left the Hutts—they were loaned out, though. Because no one on Tatooine would ever have enough for the lump sum to outright purchase a slave, but regular fee, they could do. And then because no one was paying wages, they could sell their things for lower, and then the competition would also have to buy in if they wanted to make any kind of money—and then almost everyone on Tatooine needs a slave to cut costs, to be competitive.”

Anakin took a breath. Fire, angry, hot flame was licking at the back of his throat. “But to be loaned out for a purpose, people want to know—you’re good at it. They want to know if you perform, because taking a loan from the Hutts—if the slave dies, the Hutts charge you the cost. So you can’t have, say, an older man working in the heat, the risk is too high.”

Obi-Wan’s face was bloodless. “I see,” he said, and it was the softest Anakin had ever heard him.

“Kids don’t make useful workers,” Anakin said. “They have—other purposes. But to stay with my mother I needed to have a skill that would make me—lucrative. I found things to take apart until I got good at it. I got caught, but no one wants to kill a slave, that’s a loss of money. But I got good enough at it, and bad enough at other things, that it was more profitable to loan me out elsewhere, and—I got back to my mother. But when I was—tested, I suppose—I had to stand in the desert. No food, no water, no sleep, see if I could last long enough. It’s always a question, with kids. That’s—that was as tired as I’ve ever been.”

Obi-Wan stared down at his hands. “I’m sorry, Anakin.”

“I don’t want pity,” Anakin snapped. I just wanted someone to know.

“It’s not,” Obi-Wan said, gravely. “It’s not pity. It’s sorrow, because maybe I should have asked sooner. I understand why they call it liquid courage.”

Anakin folded his hands over the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he said, finally.

“I understand what you mean, when you say nothing feels dangerous,” Obi-Wan said, lowly. “It seems endless, doesn’t it.”

“If it’s endless war, I’d rather fight with you than anyone else,” Anakin said, vehemently.

Obi-Wan huffed. “Your loyalty is unearned. But thank you, Anakin.”

“It’s not. You’re the best Jedi there is, and anyone who would say otherwise is lying,” Anakin said, this time with teeth, this time with viciousness. “It’s provable. It’s fact.”

Obi-Wan looked at him, eyes folded at the corners in a smile. “Sure of that, are you?”

“Nothing in the galaxy could change my mind,” Anakin said.

Obi-Wan lifted the jug and dropped it on the floor with a clang, grunting as he bent over, and then flopped back. “Obviously you need sleep, then. You’re deranged.”

“Sure I am,” Anakin answered, but sleep was dragging at him nonetheless. He expected Obi-Wan to get up, leave, head off to his own quarters, but there was the warm weight of Obi-Wan’s hand on his shoulder as he was nodding off, and for all he knew it never left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your time and patience as I, personally, suffer

**Author's Note:**

> They're so fucking stupid it physically hurts. If I wanted to break canon I would write a follow-up where Anakin and Obi-Wan get absolutely wasted, but this time together, in each other's direction, and engage in sharing is caring time. But they're really fucking stupid.


End file.
